Northwest Germanic

Northwest Germanic

Northwest Germanic is a proposed grouping of the Germanic dialects, representing the current consensus among Germanic historical linguists. It does not challenge the late 19th-century tri-partite division of the Germanic dialects into North Germanic, West Germanic and East Germanic, but proposes additionally that North and West Germanic remained as a subgroup after the southward migration of the East Germanic tribes, only splitting into North and West Germanic later. Whether this subgroup constituted a unified proto-language, or simply represents a group of dialects that remained in contact and close geographical proximity, is a matter of debate. The date by which such a grouping must have dissolved - in that innovations ceased to be shared - is also contentious, though it seems unlikely to have persisted after 500 AD, by which time the Anglo-Saxons had migrated to England and the Elbe Germanic tribes had settled in Southern Germany.

This grouping was proposed by Hugo Kuhn as an alternative to the older view of a Gotho-Nordic versus West Germanic division. This older view is represented by mid 20th-century proposals to assume the existence by 250 BC of five general groups to be distinguishable: North Germanic in Southern Scandinavia excluding Jutland; North Sea Germanic along the middle Rhine and Jutland; Rhine-Weser Germanic; Elbe Germanic; and East Germanic[1]. The Northwest Germanic theory challenges these proposals, since it is strongly tied to runic inscriptions dated from AD 200 onwards.

The evidence for Northwest Germanic is constituted by a range of common linguistic innovations in phonology, morphology, word formation and lexis in North and West Germanic, though in fact there is considerable debate about which innovations are significant. An additional problem is that Gothic, which provides almost the sole evidence of the East Germanic dialects, is attested much earlier than the other Germanic languages, with the exception of a few runic inscriptions. This means that direct comparisons between Gothic and the other Germanic languages are not necessarily good evidence for subgroupings, since the distance in time must also be taken into account.

Among the common innovations cited as evidence for Northwest Germanic are:

  • Proto Germanic /z/ > /r/ (e.g. Gothic dius; ON dȳr, OHG tior, OE dēor, "wild animal")
  • The use of /ē2/ in the preterite of Class VII strong verbs in North and West Germanic, while Gothic uses reduplication (e.g. Gothic haihait; ON, OE hēt, preterite of the Gmc verb *haitan "to be called")
  • The conversion of /ē1/ into /ā/ (vs. Gothic /ē/).

Postulated common innovations in North Germanic and Gothic, which therefore challenge the Northwest Germanic hypothesis, include:

  • Proto Germanic /jj/, /ww/ > /ddj/, /ggw/ (e.g. Gothic triggwa, ON tryggva, OHG triuwe, "loyalty", see Holtzmann's Law)

A minority opinion is able to harmonize these two hypotheses by denying the genetic reality of both Northwest Germanic and Gotho-Nordic, seeing them rather as mere cover terms indicating close areal contacts. (Such areal contacts would have been quite strong among the early Germanic languages, given their close geographic position over a long period of time.) Under such an assumption, an early close relationship between Nordic and Gothic dialects does not exclude a later similar relationship between remaining North and West Germanic groups, once the Gothic migration had started in the 2nd or 3rd century.

There are also common innovations in Old High German and Gothic[citation needed], which would appear to challenge both the Northwest Germanic and the Gotho-Nordic groupings. However, these are standardly taken to be the result of late areal contacts, based on the known cultural contacts across the Alps in the 5th and 6th centuries, reflected in the Christian loanwords from Gothic into Old High German.

Sources

  • E.H. Antonsen, Runes and Germanic Linguistics (Mouton, 2002)
  • H.L. Kufner, "The grouping and separation of the Germanic languages" in F. van Coetsem & H.L. Kufner (eds.), Toward a Grammar of Proto-Germanic (Niemeyer, 1972)
  • H. Kuhn, "Zur Gliederung der germanischen Sprachen", in Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum 86 (1955), 1-47.
  • H.F. Nielsen, The Germanic Languages. Origins and Early Dialectal Interrelations (University of Alabama Press, 1989)

References

  1. ^ Britannica 15th edition 22:642

See also


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужна курсовая?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Northwest Germanic — 1. noun a) The branch of the Germanic language family consisting of the North Germanic and West Germanic languages combined. This includes all modern Germanic languages, and all ancient Germanic languages except for East Germanic (which includes… …   Wiktionary

  • Germanic Parent Language — (GPL) is a term used in historical linguistics to describe the chain of reconstructed languages in the Germanic group referred to as Pre Germanic Indo European (PreGmc), Early Proto Germanic (EPGmc), and Late Proto Germanic (LPGmc). It is… …   Wikipedia

  • Germanic languages — Branch of the Indo European language family, comprising languages descended from Proto Germanic. These are divided into West Germanic, including English, German, Frisian, Dutch, Afrikaans, and Yiddish; North Germanic, including Danish, Swedish,… …   Universalium

  • Germanic peoples — The Germanic peoples are a historical group of Indo European speaking peoples, originating in Northern Europe and identified by their use of the Germanic languages which diversified out of Common Germanic in the course of the Pre Roman Iron Age.… …   Wikipedia

  • Germanic peoples — Introduction also called  Teutonic Peoples        any of the Indo European speakers of Germanic languages.       The origins of the Germanic peoples are obscure. During the late Bronze Age, they are believed to have inhabited southern Sweden, the …   Universalium

  • Marsi (Germanic) — This article is about the germanic people. For the italian people, see Marsi. Germanic tribes around 50 CE The Marsi (German: Marser) were a small Germanic tribe settled between the Rhine, Rur and Lippe rivers in northwest Germany. Tacitus… …   Wikipedia

  • Proto-Germanic language — Proto Germanic Spoken in Northern Europe Extinct evolved into Proto Norse, Gothic, Frankish and Ingvaeonic by the 4th century Language family Indo European …   Wikipedia

  • North Germanic languages — North Germanic Scandinavian Geographic distribution: Northern Europe Linguistic classification: Indo European Germanic North Germanic …   Wikipedia

  • West Germanic languages — Infobox Language family name=West Germanic region=Originally between the Rhine, Alps, Elbe, and North Sea; today worldwide familycolor=Indo European fam1=Indo European fam2=Germanic child1=Anglo Frisian child2=Low Franconian languages child3=Low… …   Wikipedia

  • List of Germanic deities — A scene from one of the Merseburg Incantations: the Germanic gods Wodan and Balder stand before the goddesses Sunna, Sinthgunt, Volla and Friia (Emil Doepler, 1905) In Germanic paganism, the indigenous religion of the ancient Germanic peo …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”